The Beginner Buyer's Guide To Digital Cameras, Or The Ins And Outs Of Megapixels

The most important part of buying a digital camera is making sure that the one you select meets all of your needs.

Digital Camera 101

Better digital cameras uses a chip called a "Charged Coupled Device" (CCD) instead of film. Light enters the camera, through the open shutter, and strikes the CCD where it is converted to digital data before being stored in the camera's memory.

While that is the simple description, things can get pretty complicated from there.

Megapixels & Resolution

Resolution is a measure of how many pixels are used to make a digital copy of an image. Pixels are tiny dots of light that make up a digital image.

The quality of a digital camera's image is usually measured in 'Megapixels' where each megapixel represents one million pixels.

Here's how to determine how many megapixels you'll need depending upon the type of photos you will be taking and what you intend to do with them.

Read the full digital camera article by Warren Lynch.